Arts Groups Draft Battle Plans as Trump Funding Cuts Loom

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David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony performed at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2011. The symphony has urged its board members to call their elected representatives about potential budget cuts under the Trump administration.CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times

A prominent Broadway producer pledged to make the case for the value of the arts directly to the Trump administration. The St. Louis Symphony drafted an email urging its board members to call their elected representatives. Midway through the Metropolitan Opera’s broadcast on Saturday afternoon, the company’s general manager, Peter Gelb, warned listeners across the country that many of the radio stations they were tuned in to were facing serious cuts.

As the news spread that the White House budget office had included the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities on a list of programs it was considering trying to eliminate, arts leaders at large and small organizations around the nation reacted with alarm — and began making plans to fight for their survival.

The federal government here plays a very small role in funding the arts, especially compared with other affluent countries. Together, the three programs that may be targeted account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of annual federal spending. But even if the arts get only crumbs, administrators said, they are crumbs worth fighting for: much-needed money that supports community projects, new works and making the arts accessible to people in different parts of the country and to those who are not wealthy. And after years of culture-war debates in which conservatives took aim at the programs, questioning their value, arts groups are pressing the case that the federal money they receive supports organizations — and jobs — in all 50 states, both red and blue.

“The N.E.A. has a big impact in the middle of the country — even more so, I suspect, than in urban areas where funding is more diversified,” said Martin Miller, the executive director of TheatreSquared, a regional theater in Fayetteville, Ark.

“Losing the N.E.A. would mean that many smaller, mid-American arts companies couldn’t weather a recession,” he said, noting that the endowment supports both state and regional arts councils. “Losing these companies would mean fewer jobs, a lower quality of life and less local spending in the small towns that need it most.”

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From left, Daryl Roth, a Broadway producer; Hal Luftig, also a producer; and Steven Roth, Ms. Roth’s husband and a Trump adviser, in 2013.CreditAri Mintz for The New York Times

Stephen Kidd, executive director of the National Humanities Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group that represents dozens of beneficiaries of N.E.H. grants, said there was a real sense of alarm that the Trump administration was moving closer to embracing the elimination of the endowment. But there is also real confidence, he said, in continuing opposition from congressional Republicans because of deep support for many N.E.H.-funded programs in conservative areas of the country.

“A big area for the N.E.H. is its programs that aid veterans in their transition back to civilian life,” Mr. Kidd said, mentioning programs like the Warrior-Scholar Project, an “intensive humanities boot camp” that began as a pilot program in 2012 at Yale University and helps veterans prepare for college.

“The N.E.H. also provides funding for museums around the country to help preserve collections that are critical to the heritage of lots of communities,” Mr. Kidd added.

Many arts officials said they were gravely concerned that the programs were back on the chopping block.

“It’s another example of our democracy being threatened,” the actor Robert Redford, the president and founder of the Sundance Institute, which helps filmmakers, said in a telephone interview. “Arts are essential. They describe and critique our society.”

President Trump is already facing pressure from some of his allies to preserve the programs. Daryl Roth, a prominent Broadway producer (“Kinky Boots,” “Indecent”) whose husband, Steven Roth, is a Trump adviser, said that she opposed eliminating the programs and that she had expressed her view to the Trump administration and would continue to do so.

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Robert Redford, the president and founder of the Sundance Institute.CreditChris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press

“The concept of ending federal funding to the N.E.A. and to the many nonprofit arts organizations, artists, writers, cultural institutions, museums and all recipients that would be affected is of course of grave concern to me,” Ms. Roth wrote in an email. “Arts education in the schools, theater groups, music and dance programs help revitalize local communities, both spiritually and economically, across the country.”

The fate of the three organizations is still far from clear: An internal memo that circulated within the Office of Management and Budget last week, which was obtained by The New York Times, noted that the list of programs targeted for elimination could still change. Officials at both of the endowments said they had not received any official word from the White House. But the programs have long been in the cross hairs of conservatives.

Romina Boccia, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said Congress should eliminate federal arts grants altogether. “The minuscule portion of art funding that comes from the federal government does not support the arts in any meaningful way; rather, it distorts the art market toward what is politically acceptable,” she said. She also questioned the need for the federal government to support public broadcasting.

But arts administrators around the nation said in interviews that culture had enjoyed bipartisan support in recent years, and that they were hopeful their elected officials could be persuaded to keep the programs. They began planning last month to make the case for the arts to their audiences, their well-connected board members and Congress.

Mr. Gelb, the general manager of the Met, had planned to tout the company’s recently announced 2017-18 season during the intermission of Saturday afternoon’s broadcast of Bellini’s “I Puritani,” which was heard on more than 500 radio stations and in 46 states. Instead, he began by speaking of the possible cuts — and noting that many of the radio stations carrying the broadcast would face serious cuts if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting were eliminated.

“I think it’s really important that people be aware of this: The possibility of losing the arts on the radio, losing the arts on television, losing the arts altogether is very real if these cuts were to go through,” Mr. Gelb said.

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Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, in 2015.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

Marie-Hélène Bernard, the president and chief executive of the St. Louis Symphony, said the orchestra had drafted a letter to its board members urging them to call their elected officials. “We asked them to let them know why it’s important,” she said.

And Andrew Kipe, the executive director of the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky, a highly regarded ensemble recovering from a recent bankruptcy, said that orchestra officials had already planned to go to Washington on March 20 for an advocacy day organized by Americans for the Arts, a network of cultural organizations, but that now the trip had taken on greater urgency. He said that the orchestra had received $15,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to support its Festival of American Music, and added that he hoped to meet with members of the state’s congressional delegation, including Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, to explain why the orchestra is vital.

“When we get to D.C. next month, we will have some real facts and figures — on job creation, economic impact — besides just arguing that funding the arts is good because it’s a good thing,” Mr. Kipe said, adding that the arts had bipartisan support in Kentucky. “The return on a relatively small investment is pretty great.”

Some administrators alluded to reports that the Trump administration might be seeking the cuts to the arts in part so it could increase spending on the military. Janne Sirén, the director of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, said in an email: “As a museum director and as a reserve Finnish special forces paratrooper, I see no conflict when a government supports both the armed forces and the cultural forces of a nation.”

But as some top administrators geared up for battle, they acknowledged a feeling of déjà vu — recalling the battles over arts funding that raged decades ago during the Reagan administration, and later when Newt Gingrich was the House speaker.

“It’s fascinating: Now I’ve been working in this field for so long that we’ve gone full circle and gone right back to again defending the role of the N.E.A.,” said Deborah F. Rutter, the president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, who previously led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony.

“The funding is important, and it’s symbolic,” she said. “It is art and culture which defines us.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Drafting Battle Plans as Cuts Loom. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe